As livestock producers face tightening margins, labor-free Integrated Pest Management can be a tool for maintaining animal health and milk production. Brian Hupp, National Account Manager at Central Life Sciences, highlights that effective fly control must start where the problem begins: the manure.
By utilizing feed-through products for pasture cattle and confinement operations, producers can turn their own livestock into “fly control agents.” This method targets flies at the larval stage, preventing them from ever becoming biting adults that spread bacteria and stress animals.
“The first place you got to go is stopping them in the manure,” says Hupp. “We’re utilizing the cow or the horse or the sheep and goat or the pig… to be our fly control agent.”
Beyond the ease of use, the economic stakes are high. Stable flies are known to significantly reduce milk production in dairy herds, while house flies act as vectors for disease in calf hutches. Hupp emphasizes that consistency is key to breaking the cycle, recommending a “30-30” approach, starting 30 days before the last frost and continuing 30 days past the first.
“Nobody wants to work in an environment where they can’t even talk without flies flying in their mouth,” Hupp notes, stressing that effective control improves not just the animal’s life, but the environment for the farm’s workforce as well.
